I recently switched from working in plain text files to working in rich text in TextEdit and one of the most annoying things about rich text is pasting from other types of windows. I like to use a fixed width font most of the time, such as Courier New. Unless I'm diligent and use Command+Option+Shift+V, I end up with a mix of fonts and font styles. I finally got fed up enough with it today to do something about it. This work-around will only work with pasting from the keyboard. It will not correctly paste text that has been dragged and dropped.

The solution is to use Keyboard Shortcuts to switch the Edit menu's items for Paste and Paste and Match Style. It's such a simple fix, I never thought to do it before now. After this fix, Command+V will paste and match style and Command+Option+Shift+V will paste (and keep the style the copied text was in).

Open System Preferences

Click Keyboard

Click the Shortcuts tab

Click the "+" button

Select TextEdit

For Menu Title, enter exactly: Paste

For keyboard shortcut, type a Command+V

Click Add

Click the "+" button

Select TextEdit

For Menu Title, enter exactly: Paste and Match Style

For keyboard shortcut, type a Command+Option+Shift+V

Click Add

There you go. Now you can paste with Command+V and always match the style of the surrounding text.

[crarko adds: Simple, but useful. This kind of thing is applicable to pretty much any application. Do most folks here look into customizing their UI to suit their own work habits? For me editing this site depends heavily on customizations in (and around) BBEdit.]

Suppose you want to open a PDF with thumbnails displayed but the person who produced it did so with table of contents displayed.

If you change Preview's configuration for this PDF to thumbnails by selecting View » Thumbnails and then save it by selecting File » Save, the next time you open the PDF it will display the Table of Contents rather than thumbnails.

In the Export sheet that displays, note that '.pdf' is appended at the end of the filename. Thus, if the file already had a .pdf extension, it now will have a duplicate extension.

Modify the filename as desired, navigate to the desired destination, and click the Save button. The resultant PDF subsequently will open with thumbnails displaying automatically.

An alternative to using Preview’s above menubar items is to use its View and Print toolbar buttons (the former is included in Preview’s default toolbar set; the latter would need to be added to the toolbar after selecting View » Customize Toolbar...).

Click the View button, select Thumbnails, then click the Print button. In the Print sheet that displays, click the PDF button in the lower left corner of the sheet. Select Save as PDF... from the popup menu.

Modify the filename as desired, navigate to the desired destination, and click the Save button. The resultant PDF subsequently will open with thumbnails displaying automatically.

[crarko adds: This may not work if the original PDF is protected. Over the years I've found PDF isn't quite the open standard I'd like it to be. Still, it remains better than the alternatives. A quick question: is this really 10.9 only? I didn't see it as an option in Snow Leopard, but what about Lion/Mountain Lion?

Organizing your e-mail can be difficult. There are Smart Mailboxes, of course, but what if you would like more arbitrary control?

Apple's Mail app includes seven flags of indifferent colors (a bit like the old Finder labels, ahem). But what if you can't remember what each color represents? Once you have flagged a message with a given flag, you will see a mailbox for it appear under Flagged. Click on the triangle next to Flagged to see the mailbox associated with each Flag.

Each of the mailboxes may then be renamed by right-clicking on it. The new name for the flag will now appear everywhere that the flag's name appears.

[crarko adds: I assume this is Mavericks only, but I could be forgetful.]

I recently imported an .ics file into the Reminders app, but it turned out all the events were already in there, and the Calendar app balked at them, one at a time, repeatedly. I was continuously presented with an alert window which said that the event already exists and I could either cancel, go offline, or revert to server (the default). After hitting return a few dozen times, I decided I would write a quick AppleScript, and do something else while it worked. I'm sure a number of Hints followers might balk at this strategy, but it worked for and I didn't care how crude it was.

I just wanted to select the default button (revert to server) in every alert window, so all I needed was a script that would hit the return key every second. I wrote this in script editor, brought one of the alert windows to the front, then Command+clicked the "Run" button in the Script Editor (so it wouldn't bring the script window to the front):

And that's it. I saved the script so that if I ever get in a similar situation, I can just edit the script to hit the key I want.

[crarko adds: I have not run into this issue, but if you do get it, having some idea for relief is probably quite welcome, even if it's not the most elegant. If there are alternative superior methods, please suggest them in the comments.]

- set the 'matched key' to ACT_TEXT - this will place the result into the clipboard
- set the 'matched key' to what the resulting text should be like
you can use the regexp substitution here, e.g. http://foobae/$1

- expanding is done by selecting the text macro in a text (any text field should work) and choosing 'Expand Selected Text' from the top bar menu.

This method is kind of technical to setup but very powerful. If one is not afraid of a bit of programming, it is possible to create full-blown macro scripts as well.

I wanted to import lists into the Reminders app on the iMac. (iCloud syncs the lists to other devices ... when sync is functioning correctly.) The Reminders app's import function acts only on .ics files. Went seeking solutions for plain text files.

While you can easily rearrange the order of your accounts in Mavericks' mail sidebar, when composing a message there is no easy way of rearranging the accounts as shown in the "From:" dropdown box in a new message; accounts are listed in the order in which they were added, which, in the case of using iCloud Keychain, may be vastly different than the order that you want them in.

Fortunately, there is an easy procedure to rearrange them:

Open up the "Internet Accounts" system preference pane

For each email account, in the order you want them to appear, uncheck and then re-check "Mail"

In this way, the accounts will be removed and readded to Mail in the order that you want them to appear.

Light-duty coders may be a bit frustrated when a browser or compiler chucks an error that cites a line number. Yes, you can get lovely third-party editors that make it much easier to work with such things, but what if you're keen on simple TextEdit?

Hit Command+L to open a "Select Line" dialog. (It also lives, oddly, under the "Find" sub-menu.)

Here is a shortcut to the protocol selection sheet when adding a new email account in Mail in Mavericks.

When adding other email accounts in Mail (in 10.9 Mavericks, I don't know about earlier versions) hold down the Option key to turn the Create button into a Next button instead. This saves you the trouble of entering a fake email address to get to the sheet where you can select the protocol type.

[crarko adds: This goes back at least as far as Snow Leopard (where the button changed to Continue), but new users may find it helpful information.]